Her nod was numb. “They’re alive.”
“You knew they were.” A pause. “You recorded the entire call?”
“Yes.”
“I need to hear it.”
Hear the man’s voice again, and her cousins’. Listen again to the sound that surely caused Will pain. Her stomach heaved, and she shook her head hard enough to whip her hair side to side. “I can’t.”
“I know. Come on.” He pulled her to her feet and stepped back. She just stood there. The guest room was to the left, past the bathroom. She didn’t want to go in there, a room she wasn’t familiar with, a darkness she didn’t intimately know, but she hadn’t been invited—
With his hand in the small of her back, Ben nudged her toward his bedroom. “You haven’t forgotten the way,” he chided softly. “If you want to watch a movie or listen to music, my laptop’s on the dresser. If you want to prove the son of a bitch wrong, get some sleep. I’ll be in the kitchen. If you need anything...”
She didn’t need much. Her life set right. Her soul unfrozen. Her family brought home and her broken heart mended. He could do all that. He was the best detective, the best cop, the best person she’d ever known. He could do anything.
He gave her another nudge, and her feet finally moved, padding down the hall, walking into the dimly lit room. She couldn’t guess how long she stood in the doorway. Long enough for Ben to sit down at the kitchen table. Long enough for the hum of voices to let her know he’d started the recording. Long enough for his own voice to drift down the hallway as he talked to someone on his cell.
Bobcat watched her from the bed. She picked up the laptop, settled in bed, with the pillows behind her and Bobcat scooting next to her, and stared at the home screen on the computer. What did she want to do? Sleep, but that wasn’t going to come easily. Have wild, crazy sex with Ben?
The possibility warmed her inside and seemed more likely than sleep, but not until he was done dealing with the phone call. She agreed with him that the voice had been altered, but she was certain it was Lloyd Wind. She lacked evidence, but she trusted her gut.
The way Ben had trusted his gut at Wind’s trial. One of them had been wrong, but at this very moment, she couldn’t consider that it might have been her. She couldn’t think of a single person other than Wind who might behind the kidnapping, and without a suspect, how would they ever get Will and Lolly back? It had to be him.
The computer screen went dark, and she swiped it awake. Her fingers hovered above the keyboard before she finally began typing. She had loved being a prosecutor, and still would have loved it back in the day when legwork was a large part of the job, but thank the heavens for the internet. With the databases she subscribed to in her practice, she could find out virtually anything without leaving her desk or, in this case, Ben’s bed.
She found little she didn’t already know, but she was used to that. Sometimes it took looking at the big picture multiple times before the important out-of-place detail showed itself. If Wind was the kidnapper, something would lead to him. Probably something small, insignificant. They just needed to find it before he tired of playing with her and demanded she trade herself for Will and Lolly. She would do it, but was it selfish of her to leave it only as a last resort?
She was looking at satellite images of Wind’s current residence when she realized it had gone quiet in the kitchen. No, not quiet. There was a rustle of steps, and the light from down the hall shifted as the lights out there were turned off. Ben’s conversation was finished. He was coming to bed. She closed the computer and set it on the night table that had always been hers.
The satellite images could wait until tomorrow.
* * *
Ben stopped in the doorway of the bedroom, his gaze automatically going to the bed. The instant he saw Bobcat lying there as if he belonged, he scowled, but instead of growling at the cat, he looked for and found Yashi at the window, one slender hand lifting the curtain so she could see the Mueller house. Worrying? Wishing that suddenly the lights would turn on and Lolly and Will would be standing unharmed on the porch? It was all just a mistake. We’re fine. Come have some iced tea.
Fine maybe, but not unharmed. Everyone who’d heard the tape—Sam, Daniel and JJ—had agreed that the thud was a punch, and that had been protective rage in Lolly’s scream. But there was nothing Ben could do about it tonight. No leads to track down, no interviews to conduct, no reason to go to the Wind house and thump Lloyd however many times it took to find out where Lolly and Will were.
You get to take a night off, Sam had said before hanging up. Put it out of your head. Let your subconscious work on it awhile.
Ben couldn’t think of a better way to relax and take a break than what he was about to do.
Stress lines wrinkled Yashi’s forehead, and she hadn’t fully lost the pallor that had come over her, but the smile she gave him was faint and thin and held potential. Her blue gaze locked on him as he crossed the threshold and started toward her. It stayed with him when he detoured to the bed, scooped up Bobcat and deposited him in the hall. He closed the door and smiled smugly. The cat had been so off guard that he hadn’t even thought to leave a wound or two.
Her smile grew fuller. “You and Bobcat really must learn to get along.”
“Not as long as I outweigh him by two hundred pounds.”
She gave him a long look, leaving icy heat tingling all over his body. He slowly walked to her. Some of the weariness faded from her eyes, replaced with desire. Promise, and damn, her promise could bring him to his knees.
I never doubted that I loved you, he’d told her, every word hard, simple truth. And he’d never doubted that she had loved him. Still loved him. They’d just made a few mistakes. People did that, and they learned from them. Hopefully, he wouldn’t need so long to learn from his next one.
Because he could live without her. The past years had proven that. He was strong. Capable. He didn’t need a specific person in his life to be happy.
But that life was so much better with this specific person in it.
She turned to face him, her back against the window frame. The first time they’d made love, they’d come from work. He’d been in his usual tac pants and polo shirt. She’d worn her preferred dark suit, this one with a dark blue shirt. She’d taken them off to reveal the tiniest undergarments he’d ever seen, a deep, rich purple, delicate and incredibly sexy. What’s the point? he’d asked breathlessly, and she’d wrapped her fingers around his erection.
That’s the point.
Though her shorts and shirt covered a lot more skin, he wanted her as much now—more now—than that night. Then she’d been all mysteries and secrets. Now he knew her body. Knew her heat. Knew how to touch her, and where, to tease and tempt and arouse and satisfy her.
He knew. Missed. Wanted.
“I threw Bobcat out—”
“He let you put him out.”
“For a reason.”
Her grin formed quickly and fully and stole his breath. “Because you don’t like him sticking his claws in your naked butt, as I recall.”
He took hold of her wrists and pulled her away from the window. His hands slid around to her back, finding a strip of bare skin between her shirt and shorts, as soft and warm as anything he’d ever felt. He urged her closer, bent his head and nuzzled her temple before sliding his mouth down to her ear. “Okay, I put him out for two reasons. For the rest of the night, in this room, it’s just you and me. Nobody else allowed. Not family, not jobs, not good guys or bad guys, not pets, not anyone. Understand?”
“Hmm.” The whispery sound slid over him, raising goose bumps on his arms, straightening the tiny hairs on his neck, twisting hard in his gut. “Sounds perfect.”
Her fingers slid beneath his shirt, her palms flattening on his stomach. It was something he’d experienced dozens of times, but it still made him suck in his breath, still m
ade his muscles go taut. When she slid them up his chest, he knew what was coming next. Knew she was going to claim his strength as her own, make him weak and hungry and at her mercy.
And she showed mercy in the best ways.
He took his sweet time moving his mouth to hers, tasting her here and there, leaving a tiny mark on the delicate skin of her neck, finally sliding his tongue between her lips. Kissing, he’d thought as a teenager, was the best thing ever, and he’d been of the same opinion as he got older—at least, until he met Yashi. Kissing her was the best thing ever. He couldn’t explain it. He didn’t believe in soul mates—his mom had believed his dad was her soul mate—but there had been something so right about him and Yashi from the very beginning.
It was still there. The way she touched her tongue to his. The way her hands stroked his body. The way his body responded. Those little mewls of pleasure deep in her throat.
It was like, after a very long time away, he had come home.
* * *
It was one hell of a kiss.
The primal part of Yashi that equated sex with survival wanted to strip off their clothes, jump into bed and go at it like horny little bunnies. The part that equated sex with Ben with the best reason ever to survive shared that desire. Some small part of her wanted to take it slow, take their time, enjoy their bliss, but it was outnumbered and definitely outvoiced.
She broke the kiss long enough to sweep his shirt over his head and yank off her own. By the time he claimed her mouth again, she was wriggling and bending like a contortionist, sliding down her shorts and panties. Drawing on past experience, while stroking his tongue with hers, she removed the rest of his clothes with virtually no effort: all she had to do was insinuate her fingers under the waistband of his shorts, wrap them around his erection, and with a great groan of need, he stripped off the clothing himself.
When she tugged him toward the bed, protest came from deep in his throat. She ignored him, twisting out of the way of his wandering hands, making him move with her if he wanted to keep touching her. They fell onto the mattress in a tangle of arms and legs, feverish and restless, moving together as if they always had.
He produced a condom from nowhere—she guessed he’d palmed it before shucking his shorts—and put it on with some effort because of her frantic efforts to pull him closer, inside her, so deep they could get lost together.
And then he was there, cradled in her hips, bracing himself above her, staring at her with more emotion than she’d ever seen in his dark eyes. I never doubted that I loved you. The echo of his words made her heart hurt in a good way, the way the razor-sharp need slicing through her body hurt in a good way. She hoped he saw the same in her eyes. Hoped he trusted it. Trusted her.
She hoped she didn’t go through this only to break her heart again.
And then he moved, slowly withdrawing, slowly sliding back inside, and he gripped her hands tightly in his and lowered his head to her breast.
And her only hope then was that she survived the pleasure of the night.
* * *
When Yashi woke up, the bedroom was dark except for the four watts of light coming from a night-light plugged into an outlet. Ben didn’t care about the dark, but she did, and so he had bought the light for her.
And kept it all these years.
The room was quiet, no sound but slow, steady breathing behind her. She lay on her side, so close to the edge that her bent knees extended off the mattress, and Ben’s body molded to hers. His arm held her about the waist, and his legs warmed hers.
The big, stoic detective was a bed hog who liked to spoon. How many people knew that about him?
For the first time in days, every bit of tension was drained away. She wasn’t sure she could even hold her head up, and she was fairly certain her knees would buckle if she tried to stand. But she didn’t want to hold her head up, or stand, or do anything other than what she was doing. She wanted to lie there forever. Or, at least, until they made love a few more times.
Her eyelids were starting to droop, sinking in time with each of his deep breaths, when a sound from elsewhere in the house filtered into the room. A quiet rustle, then a crash followed by a feline yowl.
Instantly awake, Ben let go of her so quickly that she was lucky she didn’t slide off the edge of the bed. By the time she sat up, he’d grabbed his gun from the nightstand and was slipping from the room. She dragged his discarded shirt over her head, but damn it, she’d left her pistol in her purse in the living room. That didn’t stop her from taking the baseball bat Ben kept behind his bedroom door and easing out the door, heart pounding, and down the hall, hugging the shadows close to the wall.
“Oh, for the love of—”
She rounded the corner to the living room. The bathroom light was on, the door open, and in its faint light, she first saw Ben, shaking his head in dismay, then a spray of pottery shards on the floor. On the shelf the pot had previously occupied, Bobcat watched them with arrogant-cat nonchalance before leaping onto a chair, then to the floor, and trotting off to the bedroom. Ben continued to stare at the floor, his weapon hanging at his side.
“Oh no.” Yashi’s voice was quavery. “That’s one of Louise Pickering’s pots, isn’t it?”
“It was.”
After setting the bat on the nearest chair, she crouched to pick up the bigger pieces. The pot had been beautiful and elegant and way outside Ben’s budget. Either he’d saved a good while or, being a friend, Louise had given him a discount. Either way, it was something he would have valued far beyond its price.
“I’m so sorry, Ben. I can replace it. I mean, I can’t replace it. I know Louise never does the exact piece twice. But I can get you another one.” If she ate nothing but ramen noodles for the next five years. Maybe six or seven.
He pulled her to her feet, took the pieces and set them on the coffee table, then laid his pistol beside them. When he wrapped his arms around her, the tension she’d expected to find wasn’t there, and when he spoke, there was actually a hint of humor in his voice.
“I guess Bobcat and I have to learn to get along.”
She tilted her head back to see his expression. “Really?”
His grin was rueful. “I may outweigh him, but he can outsmart me. What do you want to bet that right now he’s curled up on my pillow, while I’m standing out here getting cold and missing out on sleep.”
“I wouldn’t take that bet.” Rising onto her toes, she kissed his jaw. “You go back to bed. I’ll clean this up.”
He looked as if he might argue until a yawn split his face. “Thanks.”
Wearing nothing but his shirt that hung off one shoulder, she was getting cold, too, so she swept up the pottery shards quickly. She hated dumping them into the trash, but they weren’t worth anything anymore.
When she returned to the bedroom, Ben was already asleep. He lay on his side in the middle of the bed, leaving just enough space in front of him for her to snuggle in. With more than ample room behind him, Bobcat was curled against his back. He looked at her, meowed, then did his own snuggling.
“I always suspected you had a soft spot for Ben,” she whispered as she circled the bed. “It’s okay. I do, too. Just to try not to break any more valuables when you show it.”
She slid under the covers, got positioned and, like the boys, fell asleep immediately.
The next time she stirred, it was morning, she was alone in the big bed and Ben’s funky coffee was fouling the air. She grimaced, realized the smell was way too close to be in the kitchen and opened her eyes to find him standing beside the bed, watching her with his usual enigmatic look.
Then he smiled, and she felt as if the sun had come out after a very long, hard night.
“Up, up. My presence has been requested by the boss. You’ve got fifteen minutes to get ready.”
She refused to think about what the boss—Sam—wante
d to talk to Ben about. If it was last night’s phone call, that would place itself immovably before her at the right time, and she wouldn’t worry until then.
“I only need half that time,” she said as she rose from the bed, shedding the sheet and walking very naked to the bag he’d carried in from the living room. She glanced at him over her shoulder as she pulled garments from the bag. “Shouldn’t you be doing something?”
He moved to lean against the dresser, his ankles crossed, and sipped his coffee while he continued to unashamedly watch her. “I am. I’m putting on my gun belt.”
A smile quirked her mouth as she donned blue-and-white-striped panties and a matching bra. It soothed her, having Ben look at her with such appreciation. It reminded her of how good they’d been together, and how easily they’d found that goodness again last night. It gave her hope, and today, like every day, she needed it.
Finally he put his coffee down and actually put on his gun belt. She dressed in dark blue capris and a blue chambray shirt, then slid her feet into socks and running shoes. Whatever she did today, she wanted to be comfortable doing it.
After a stop in the bathroom, she went to wait for him at the door. Her teeth were brushed, her hair was in a ponytail and she’d put on minimal makeup. She’d set out fresh food and water for Bobcat but didn’t look for anything for herself, though. Once her schedule had been decided for her, there would be plenty of time to eat.
It was a quiet drive into town. Ben was never chatty first thing in the morning, and she wasn’t sure it even was morning. The sky was gray and dark, with steady breezes whipping through tree limbs and occasional gusts buffeting the truck sideways and peppering the windows with sand and dirt.
But the clock on the dashboard showed it was 8:53 and—“Oh my word, you’re late.” Ben was rarely late. A time or two, because he was so incredible and she was so greedy, but never routinely. He had his mother’s work ethic and was often at his desk long before anyone else arrived.
“I told Sam you need to sleep awhile longer. He knows you’ve been having problems.”
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